Coffeehouse Civility, 1660-1714: An Aspect of Post-Courtly Culture in England

Abstract

The first coffeehouse in England is said to have been established in Oxford about 1650. One opened in London a few years later, after which coffeehouses proliferated, first in the metropolis and then throughout the provinces. In subsequent decades, the coffeehouse evolved from a novelty into an essential institution of urban life in England, at least for males of the upper and middling parts of urban society. The diaries of men such as Samuel Pepys and Robert Hooke suggest how habitual (and at the same time various) visits to coffeehouses were becoming among these classes as early as the 1660s and 1670s.1 The phenomenon of the coffeehouse is inseparable from broader commercial trends in Restoration and eighteenth-century England. The coffeehouse was itself a commercial venture, run by a small entrepreneur, yet tied, by virtue of its premier product, to the grand trade with the East. The coffeehouse was also an important site for commercial transactions. In an era before offices, when commerce went on mostly in the Exchange or in markets, the coffeehouse satisfied the functions of mailroom, boardroom, desk space, and, of course, cafeteria. The exemplary case here is Lloyd's, the insurers and bankers, which began as a coffeehouse.2

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